She was mortified because we both knew why she had concluded otherwise. I was brown and she therefore assumed that I was “the help”

I waved away the mistake and she and her husband sat down and asked me what I was working on. We had a long chat about our favourite books, life in the UK versus US and how lucky we were to be sailing across the Pacific – and it was utterly lovely.

That was the racism in this story…her “assuming” that she assumed. It was reversed but that doesn’t count, does it? Now remove the hate and guess what, “it was utterly lovely”.